Jindal Poll pipeline, is Louisiana Governor at 50 or 35 percent?

Is Governor Bobby Jindal’s favorables at 50% as a poll his own campaign apparatus claims? Or, is it in the mid-thirties as other impartial polls assert?

These are questions many Jindal watchers are considering today as we read that our Governor, who cannot seem to make it to Lake Jindal, or otherwise known as the environmental disaster occurring on his watch, Bayou Corne sinkhole, has now made a (presumably-paid) campaign-like stop to Colorado to blast “radical left” for their concerns about a pipeline across the bowel of the nation.

On Monday, we learned that the Louisiana Republican Party and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have sported a new poll. According to the survey, Mary Landrieu and Bill Cassidy are in a virtual tie one year away from qualifying for next year’s US Senate race.

This is believable as a number of polls show a relatively unknown Baton Rouge Congressman within spitting distance from becoming the junior Senator from Louisiana. Unquestionably, Landrieu has her work cut out for her this year as she hopes to return to Washington DC Senate for a fourth term.

However, the same poll, as promoted by LAGOP has Jindal rising from the political dead hovering over the point between good and bad--50 percent. According to Greg Hilburn of the Monroe News Star, that poll was conducted by Jindal’s best- buddy and top campaign consultant (Timmy Teepell’s) employer OnMessage.

Given that a Bernie Pinsonat poll and others this spring had Jindal in the mid-thirties, a climb of that nature would be somewhat of a political surprise, although surely within the realm of plausibilities.

After all, it has now been a couple of months since the somewhat embarrassing legislative session in which the conservative “hawks” teamed up with democrats to challenge the governor’s budget. Since then, the governor has been on the road, both inside the state and beyond campaigning, making paid speeches and visiting one explosion or train-wreck site after another promising to make the community whole, just as he did with Bayou Corne.

Yet, sometimes timing is everything. The Jindal-Teepell poll showing Jindal at 50% just happened to come out the same day as another one--one not paid for by the Bobby Jindal campaign. Instead, this poll also released Monday by the conservative Harper Polling/Conservative Intelreleased a poll on Monday has Jindal floundering at 35 percent favorability, not 50%. According to Politico, “the survey reached out to 596 Pelican State voters, with a 4.01 percent margin of error.”

Obviously, questions are raised, such as:

Will the Jindal-owned Louisiana Republican Party send out an email touting Jindal at 35% as it promoted him at 50% on Monday?

Will the Jindal Team Timmy Teepell accuse the Harper Polling as being "liberal and not credible" in order to save face as being the only organization in recent history to put Jindal back into respectable "number land?

And, who and what is one to believe?

A poll by an impartial conservative organization that happens to correlate with other disinterested polling organizations? Or a poll apparently conducted by a Jindal and long-time campaign crony and paid for by the Jindal campaign, itself?

It might be nice if one day the Jindal campaign would pay for an indepedent poll to test its own waters and not send its dollars to its alter-ego to inflate the governor's ego.

In fact, it doesn’t even take the “radical left” to figure out this one.